


Scavenger

by levendis



Series: Prompt Fics [99]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Bad Decisions, F/F, Fantastic Racism, Milkshakes, Time Loop, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-16
Updated: 2016-12-16
Packaged: 2018-09-08 22:56:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8866711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/levendis/pseuds/levendis
Summary: You can't go home again, they'll find you there. It's the very first place they'll look.





	

**Author's Note:**

> for anon, who prompted: could you please do sub!Clara and dom!Bonnie, with consensual BDSM including cropping? xxx

  
A diner settles into existence in a vacant lot.  
  
Clara likes that, likes how it looks. A splash of color in the grey monotony, something magical and strange asserting itself in the dirt and rubble. The poetry of it.  
  
Still, she takes care to make sure no one notices. Even if the front door hinges squeak loud enough to be heard miles off. She buttons up the cardigan she doesn't need, for the cool autumn weather she can't feel, and pushes through the doorway as it squawks.  
  
"Melodramatic," she whispers fondly, and pats the doorknob.  
  
"You'd know," Me says, from behind the counter.  
  
"And you. Three peas in a pod. Or two peas in a pod but the pod is very much like - anyway."  
  
"You know it's a risk," Me says.  
  
"Obviously." Clara had thought she'd successfully ended this conversation, but apparently not.  
  
"A very stupid, unnecessary risk," Me says. She's got that face on, the one that means _I am much older than you and know better._

 

* * *

 

  
  
The woman who wears Clara's body around is composed and severe, angry maybe. The woman who wears Clara's body around like it's a badge of honor is kissing her. Softly, gently, some sort of victory there.  
  
Clara had been asleep for most of the backstory. Locked away, silent. She might be bitter - but then, time has passed. And she's forgiven him for so much. Why not this?  
  
The woman who wears Clara's face (so much better and with so much more conviction than she ever has) is pinning her against a wall. Faded wallpaper, bad repairs and the stains from a leaky pipe. The cold draft through the bedroom window, the limited personal effects.  
  
Clara lets the woman push her down to the floor. She figures it's owed.

 

* * *

 

  
  
You can't go home again, they'll find you there. It's the very first place they'll look.

 

 

* * *

 

  
  
_Say my name,_ the woman says.  
  
Clara doesn't remember it. She'd been asleep at the time. Locked up, silenced. She remembers the woman, but the specifics, if she ever had them, have long since been made obsolete.  
  
She stifles a laugh when the woman says her name for Clara to repeat, the rounded proper vowels, the implications. A fair, good and beautiful girl. _Bonnie_. Of all things. Clara doesn't mean to be insulting, but it's just incongruous. The wrong name, somehow. Unexpected, at least.  
  
Her name to choose, though.  
  
So she says, she says. Clara says her name, down on her knees, skin against cold linoleum. Bonnie, Bonnie. Please.  
  
It's just that she missed it, she wasn't there. She'd been asleep. And besides, she's forgiven him for so much worse.

 

 

* * *

 

  
  
Identity theft, possibly, or identity donation. Identity finders-keepers. Not like she was using hers anymore. The flat in her name, redecorated but recognizable. The only decent place to put a sofa, the garbage bin under the sink. She slips the folded piece of paper out of her pocket and into the bin while Bonnie isn't looking.  
  
Bonnie, whose name she's just learned, or re-learned. Bonnie who is her now, or sort of her and partially her sister? As far as the government is concerned.  
  
_Not an ideal arrangement_ , Bonnie says, glancing at the tasteful cabinetry behind which the garbage bin is hidden. _But needs must._

 

 

* * *

 

  
  
It's sort of fun, is the thing, to be a tourist in your own life. A block of flats, the grey sky and scuffed concrete. The slow lift jerking upwards. Kids around the corner shoving markers back into their pockets, their other names scrawled on the wall behind them.  
  
The lock's been changed. She feels silly - for hoping her old life might have stayed waiting for her just this once - and relieved - for the weight of her old life being cut free - and a sort of emptiness for, well. Her old life having been cut away.  
  
The boy down on the ground acid-etching his other name into a window, cap pulled low.  
  
Clara turns away, key back into her pocket. A certain weight settling around her shoulders. And she sees herself, down the hall from where she used to live. Or not herself, but someone who looks very much like her. ( _Say her name._ )

 

 

* * *

 

  
  
Her knees on the cold linoleum and her arms pulled back behind her. The snap-crack pain between her shoulder blades. Blood, maybe, welling. Something heavy and aching inside her.

 

* * *

 

  
  
The bulletin board by the lift has a flier advertising local activities. Classes at the community center, potlocks, book clubs. A hotline and something in a language she only half-recognizes.  
  
Another flier in that language alone. The translation circuit wrapped through her head refusing to help out, for whatever reason.  
  
"Bit of a mess, isn't it." A man shuffles up: older, not an OAP but getting there. He looks at Clara like he thinks he's found a friend.  
  
"Sorry?"  
  
"Nothing against them, my neighbor's a shifter. Good man, takes my trash down to the skip for me. But all this 'Zygon-only' nonsense, after all the trouble getting them set up here. Seems ungrateful, is all."  
  
She smiles vaguely and edges away; he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a folded piece of paper and hands it to her. She smiles again, and ducks into the lift, unfolding the paper as the floor pulls up into her chest.

 

* * *

 

  
  
A diner settles into existence in an empty lot. Clara thinks about that image a lot.  
  
She's leaving, her cardigan buttoned up high against the chill of an impending winter.  
  
"They'll be looking for us here," Me's saying from behind the counter. Hands white-knuckle on a metal milkshake tin, with a chocolate milkshake inside, because she always makes a milkshake when she's angry, though she sometimes doesn't get around to actually drinking it. "Is anything you're looking for worth tempting fate?"  
  
Maybe, probably not. Clara goes anyway.  
  


* * *

 

  
  
The woman who wears Clara's life around kisses her. Clara, who's given up most of her life, kisses back. Why not. It's a strange enough world. The woman kisses her and Clara mumbles _I'm sorry_ against her lips. Because she remembers, even if she'd been asleep for most of it.  
  
She follows a very familiar path down to the floor. Hands on her shoulders, squeezing then leaving. Coming back with something hard and long and straight, the point dragged down between her shoulder blades. Pulled back, returned. She swallows up the animal noise crowding her throat.

 

 

* * *

 

  
  
Clara would've just turned 35, if she had ages to turn anymore. It's been a while, anyway. All those tomorrows and yesterdays, they add up.  
  
A block of flats, an ill-advised trip back home. Call it nostalgia. The lock had been changed on the door to where she'd used to live. She'd turned to leave and caught a glimpse of herself. And she'd remembered, and the woman who was not her (but looked remarkably like her) had stepped forward and said, simply, _don't go_.

 

 

* * *

 

  
  
The kindly older man is looking at her like he thinks he's found a new friend.  
  
"What makes you think I'm not one of them?"  
  
"Oh, I can tell the difference, love. Always something off about them. Not like you."  
  
Clara doesn't know what to say to that.  
  
"We should stick together," the man says. "Folks like us. No sense throwing the baby out with the bathwater, hey?"  
  
"I have to go," she says, and lets him press a folded piece of paper into her hands. The lift comes. She takes it. The floor pulls up into her chest.

 

 

* * *

 

  
  
Don't go, not yet.  
  
They are, the both of them, an image of the girl she'd been. Bonnie a more faithful copy, maybe. More deserving of the thing she'd been, maybe.  
  
Bonnie standing over her, breathing hard, bringing the crop down against Clara's back. Clara squirming, teeth clenched, hands in fists, fingernails digging into her palms. Something uneasy coming loose inside her. Wet and shuddering and aching, and the bruises blooming.  
  
It's not her life, anymore. Not a face she can lay claim to. Not a planet, even, that she's meant for. This isn't a mistake, but it is, it is. A sendoff, a warning, a final testing of the wall between who she is and who she was. Who she'd been. That face, now, looming above her. Bonnie does Clara better than Clara ever did. (That particular version of her, anyway.)

 

 

* * *

  
  
  
  
_ENGLAND FOR THE ENGLISH, EARTH FOR HUMANS_ , the header on the paper reads. Clara folds it back up and tucks it into her pocket.  


 

* * *

 

  
  
"How many times has it been for you?" Bonnie asks. She's naked, or at least presenting a facsimile of nudity now.  
  
The timeline tugs at Clara. This, this here, it happens again.  
  
"This is the fourth time. For this, specifically, I mean."  
  
Bonnie wraps her arms around Clara, Clara's head settling under her chin. "And does anything ever change?"  
  
No, not really. Clara says nothing, just slips back down beneath the covers.

 

 

* * *

 

 

  
  
"I hope it was worth it," Me says.  
  
and  
  
"I hope it was worth it," Bonnie says.  
  
and  
  
"I hope it was worth it," the man says.  
  
and, well.  
  
Clara doesn't know, does she. Whether it was or not. It's not all black and white, not like that.

 

 

* * *

 

  
  
Clara leaves, like she does, like she's always done. Her past a country behind her. The woman with her face and her body (but not her name) closing the door, still angry and stoic and blank as she shoves Clara out into the hall. _Don't come here again._  
  
She adjusts her skirt and her panties and tries to adjust the heavy thing sitting inside of her. The defined past, a world beyond her reach. She'd been asleep when it'd happened. It's not her fault.  
  
Or it is, but even if it is, amends can't always be made - she knows that now. She's learned that now. Some things just are. Mistakes aren't really meant to be undone. Still, still. Wasn't quite her mistake. And besides, she's forgiven worse than this.

 

 

* * *

 

  
  
A diner settles into existence in an abandoned lot. She likes that about it, likes the bright colors against all that grey. The elsewhere, the other, the dream of another reality so much more magical than this one.  
  
The door squeaks as it opens.  
  
Me, leaning out through the doorway. Milkshake mustache, she's white-knuckling the metal tin.  
  
"You did what you had to?" she asks.  
  
"Don't think so, no. But you were right."  
  
"I was right," Me repeats, stepping only just aside as Clara pushes past her.  
  
"Can't go home again. They'll find us, if we stay."  
  
"So we're leaving."  
  
"Yeah, we're leaving." Clara gestures towards the back of the diner. After you.  
  
Me rolls her eyes, and leaves her milkshake on the counter, and brushes past Clara and into the console room.  
  
"Where next?" Me's hand is tense on the lever.  
  
Anywhere, anywhere. Everywhere. Clara flicks the randomizer on, and off, and back on again, leaning in hard. She grins rough, all teeth, as the rotor wheezes into motion. The floor dropping away from her chest. Anywhere, maybe. Anywhere but here, or anywhere and here. One of those.


End file.
